tldr: cheat sheets for thousands of commands, shorter than man pages

You need to extract a .tar.gz file, type man tar, and get hundreds of lines of complete documentation without a single example for what you actually want. You end up searching the web anyway. tldr-pages is a community-written set of cheat sheets for thousands of commands: each page has a short description and 5–8 examples for the most common tasks. Read it in seconds, copy and run.

GitHub: https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr · about 64k stars · Markdown · content CC BY 4.0

Installing a client

The repo holds the content (Markdown pages); to read it in the terminal you install a client. The README lists several options:

brew install tlrc              # official Rust client, command is "tldr"
cargo install tlrc --locked
npm install -g tldr            # Node.js client
pipx install tldr              # Python client

Don't want to install anything? Use the web app at tldr.inbrowser.app, which works offline.

Usage

tldr tar           # common tar examples
tldr git rebase    # subcommands
tldr --update      # download the latest pages into the cache
tldr --platform linux ip    # pick a platform when commands differ between OSes
tldr --list        # list available pages

A tldr page is a short Markdown file. Here is the start of the tar page (source: tldr-pages, CC BY 4.0); clients render it with colours:

# tar

> Archiving utility.

- [c]reate an archive and write it to a [f]ile:
`tar cf {{path/to/target.tar}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}`

- [c]reate a g[z]ipped archive and write it to a [f]ile:
`tar czf {{path/to/target.tar.gz}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}`

Letters in square brackets hint at each flag's meaning (c = create, z = gzip, f = file); the parts in {{...}} are placeholders for real values.

tldr versus man and web searches

Contributing

• Each page is a Markdown file in a standard format under pages/ (split by platform: common, linux, osx, windows…).
• If a command you use often is missing (including popular internal tools), you can submit a PR following CONTRIBUTING.md.
• The project has translations into many languages; the README links to a page tracking translation progress.

Caveats

• tldr examples use placeholders like {{path/to/file}}; replace them with real paths before running, especially for commands that delete or overwrite.
• When flags behave differently between GNU (Linux) and BSD (macOS), double-check with man on your own machine.
• Run tldr --update periodically; clients use a local cache.

How to apply it

• Dev: Make a habit of typing tldr command before opening a browser; for rarely used commands like ffmpeg, rsync and openssl it saves a lot of time.
• Tech Lead: Include tldr in onboarding tools, especially for people new to Linux, and encourage the team to contribute pages for tools they use.
• PM: Less time spent on repetitive lookups, more on the real work; free and offline.